


yellow flowers from aphrodite

by awenswords



Series: The Magicians One-Shots [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, Flowers, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sex, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn - Freeform, Peaches and Plums, Rebirth, Season/Series 04, Summoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 05:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18653440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awenswords/pseuds/awenswords
Summary: "I don’t care about people,“ Eliot says, “I only ever gave a fuck about myself and Margo. I never wanted to love Quentin Coldwater. But I did, and I do, and I don’t know how to love people. I don’t have the words to tell you that I love him because they’re not - they’re not in my fucking vocabulary.” He bows his head, scratches his face and tries to scrub the tears away, “I don’t know how to prove anything to you, or to myself, but you have his voice and his eyes and isn’t that enough?"///Eliot summons a goddess to get Quentin back.





	yellow flowers from aphrodite

_Dying feels more - and less - than he expected it to. Emotions still hit him, roll through him and he can still cry, which he didn't expect. But speaking with Penny, Quentin's suddenly, painfully aware of how quiet the world is without his heartbeat. The soundless void in his chest makes him stumble, and he tries to inhale calming breaths but air flows into his lungs and nowhere further. No rush of oxygen. Breathing is an empty action._

_He doesn't think he much likes being dead, but he didn't like being alive that much either so he's really not sure what he expected._

_Penny speaks and it goes right through him, over him, mouth moving and sounds happening but they don't register. All he knows is that there is a metro-card in his hand, digging into his palm, and Penny is giving him the escape he's been looking for. It's inviting, that clean white doorframe, and when he walks through, eyes closed, and on the other side his feet land in crisp grass._

_He wipes at the teartracks on his cheeks and blinks open his eyes, expecting relief and painlessness and eternity. Sun glaring in his eyes he blinks, head hurting and he stumbles forwards, feet sinking into thick green grass that tickles at his ankles, scratching little itchy grass-cuts. He hears a stream, birdsong, smells earth and dirt and real-world, alive smells, nothing like the sterile, stale scents of the Library's Underworld branch. Flowers grow fast, curling up through bushes and trailing their way over tree roots. Powder yellow blossoms, air of bees and butterflies and green._

_The sky rolls, thunder rumbles deep in Quentin's bones and the flowers wither, the grass droops and crumbles to dust. Trees lose their leaves in a violent burst of green to yellow to orange to falling, falling, falling to the ground. Rain plasters hair to Quentin's face, rolls of his eyelashes and he shivers. Lightning splits the sky._

_"Just one minute more," a voice says from behind him, soft and boyish, and the yellow flowers grow again, "very soon, Quentin Colwater."_

_He smells wine and turns around to the red-nosed young man, languid and draped in deep crimson silks. Golden curls rustle in the wind as he bends down to pluck a flower from the ground, holds it up to the light with a ghost of a smile, "My lady does not grant many her blessing," the man says, folding the flower in Quentin's hand._

_It withers and smells like blood._

_"Who are you?"_

_"I am you," he says, eyes gleaming with something bright and beautiful, "Love and death and love again."_

Eliot thinks his skin might be on fire, little red ants just under his epidermis, all legs and bites and he drags his nails over his back, turns the shower as cold as possible and stands under the frigid water. Tips his head back, lets the chilly stream run through his overlong hair. Blood drips off his fingers, down the drain, stark red against the immaculate white tiles. His fingernails are jagged and chipped, like someone before him gnawed on them. Just another sign of the Monster, ruining his body. Meat-suit. Carcass.

Bones and sinew that once housed an intruder.

He needs - he needs - he turns off the shower, disoriented, steps onto the plush gray carpet. Damp, raisin-skin toes sinking into the fluff and leaving behind wet footprints. As he wraps a towel around his waist he feels spinny, waterlogged, head-of-cotton. The fabric of the towel is too scratchy, the lights too bright. Eliot remembers learning about premature babies in high school, or maybe that was community college, before he dropped out to run away from the harsh clutches of Indiana. He feels like a premie, too used to the quiet of his own head to deal with the overload of sounds and lights and cold tile under his bare feet. He learns to walk again like a foal, knobby-kneed and shivering. Maybe he should be in the NICU, not someone else’s bathroom in a cottage that he used to _rule._

His reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror is gaunt, dark circles under his eyes and pale, jaundiced skin. Jaw like sandpaper when he runs his fingers over it. He finds a baby pink women's razor and expensive shaving cream on the edge of the tub. It smells like chamomile and rose water when he lathers it on his jaw in a thick layer of white foam. The razor looks wrong in his hand - a soft, feminine arch, so unlike how the Monster housed his body. Eliot woke up with combat boots, heavy and stifling and awful, and black jeans. He hasn't worn jeans since high school.

Eyes hollow in the mirror, Eliot remakes himself. Drags the razor over his jaw, wipes away the shaving cream. Fingers still numb and tingling from being back in his body, he shakes a little and draws blood. The razor clatters to the floor and a red speck drips onto the sink like the start of a Pollock painting titled Mistake No. 458. He hisses when the sharp pain hits him, dabs at the blood with toilet paper and bends down to retrieve the razor. He finishes shaving when his hand stops trembling.

He finds clothes folded on the toilet seat. Real clothes, not the tattered black and white and red ones that he steps around on the floor. Discarded haphazardly in his haste to get clean, scrub off the blood and the angry ants. Margo chose the clothes because Eliot was too shaken to do anything besides stumble into the shower, halfway through lighting a joint, because Alice came back with the news. What she chose is - all black, probably the only clothes like that he owns. His fingers are numb and distant as he buttons up the crushed-velvet wasitcoat.

Black trousers and black button-town and black tie, there's a reason for that and he pushes it to the back of his mind because the moment he thinks about how Julia is outside gathering firewood for the - the moment he thinks about it his jaw trembles and the wave washes over him. His vision blurs and he can't see his own reflection in the mirror.

He feels like a fucking _widower._

Not thinking is better, but even that still drags him into something awful and black so he decides to raid the bathroom even more. Opens the medicine cabinet, fishes out eyeliner and - orange bottles, labeled with fine text side-effect warnings. Now his hands are shaking again. Two little blue capsules of Xanax in his palm, catching the light. Powder so easily split on the marble counter top or the scoop of his fingernail. It would be easy to get rid of the itch, and his body fucking screams. That restless, awful feeling rises up along his spine and crowds in his head like he's been turned upside down. Bloodrush. Cravings that grip at his throat, stifle the oxygen when he tries to breathe.

Margo shoves open the bathroom door and powder blue pills clatter into the sink, Eliot's hands coming to grip the marble. Black eyeliner smears across his palm.

"Eliot?" Margo sounds - angry and afraid all at once. She’s not scared of him, not quite, but she’s afraid of what grief does to him.

Fumbling to hide the pill bottles, Eliot hums, wipes his hand on his pants and turns around, "Sorry, Margo, you're too late to see me in the shower."

“The _fuck_ are you up to, El?”

Eliot shrugs, "Making myself look presentable. I was thinking of cutting my hair next." He tugs at the damp curls that fall in front of his face, too messy and imperfect. (Quentin liked him with short hair, liked tugging on the little curls that sprouted up at his temples)

Margo’s faces goes soft, she lets her eyes flicker around the room a moment before resting on the - fuck - the orange bottles. It takes just a step forwards for Margo to see the two pills in the sink and how Eliot’s hands tremble. A cocktail of anger and sadness mix together in her eyes when she looks at Eliot. Pity. Disappointment, maybe. “Did you take anything?”

“Too many choices,” Eliot says flippantly. Frustration pulls Margo’s face into tight lines, furrowed brows, narrowed eyes.

“Quentin tried to stop the Monster from drinking.”

The name stabs into his chest, like a knife between his ribs. God, he wants to be numb.

Eliot raises an eyebrow at Margo, swallowing back the embarrassment and self-loathing that's rising in his throat at his own thoughts, “I’m inclined to continue down that path." He reaches behind him to the sink and fishes out the Xanax, but he hears a flutter of fingers and they're gone, dropping into Margo’s open palm. She holds his gaze as she opens the toilet lid and drops the two capsules into the water, dumps out the prescription painkillers and the cough syrup and the ambien. Flushes the toilet. Takes a deep breath, balls her hands into fists like she's holding back anger.

"I'm not going to fucking - rehab, or anything."

"I don't expect you to, _Eliot!"_ Margo bursts out, "Just - sit down, and give me that."

He scoffs, "What, am I going to snort the fucking eyeliner?" But he complies, exhaustion dragging at his bones, and sits down on the edge of the tub.

"Your hands are shaking, El," Margo says, uncapping the pencil and crouching down, elbows resting on Eliot's knees. She cups Eliot's chin in her left hand, "Close your eyes.”

Eliot closes his eyes and waits for the feeling of thick wax on his eyelids. Margo is so, so careful, treats it like this is something important. Permanent. With his skin newborn-sensitive, Eliot can almost feel every swirl of Margo’s thumbprint against his jaw, the gentle scraping of eyeliner fumbling between his eyelashes. The way she tilts Eliot's head like he's a glass statue. "There. You look more like yourself," she says when she leans back, caps the pencil and watches as Eliot's eyes flutter open.

Eliot does look more like himself with the touch of smooth brown lining his eyes. More awake, less hollow and dead and fish-eyed.

“My skin is full of ants but I don't _feel_ it,” Eliot says to his reflection as he adjusts his funeral-black tie, “If I don’t do something, I’m going to be - I’ll be eaten, or I’ll explode.” He might fold like cards, like cards handled so beautifully between Quentin's fingers, little magic tricks for their grandchildren even when his hands went stiff with arthritis magic couldn't cure.

“We’re getting him back,” she says, drawing him out of the bathroom and down the hall, “We’ll find something.”

 _TA-DA_ flickers weakly.

No one mills about in the living room this evening, no partygoers or red-solo-cup people. There’s just Alice, crying soft tears in the corner where Quentin used to curl up with her on the window seat. It would make Eliot mad, that she thinks she can grieve for him when Eliot’s the one who got fifty years with Q. He’d like to feel grief, but instead he feels fireants and withdrawal and deep hopeless. He's detached from his body, a balloon for his brain floating three-feet above his head. Tethered by nothing but a bright-red ribbon that nearly snaps with every footstep.

“Bambi,” Eliot murmurs as he slides to sit down at the dinner table, “your hope is lovely, but it’s not mine.”

She leans down and growls through gritted teeth, "I'm not sitting by and watching you play the widower. He is not gone."

"Alice saw - "

"I give zero fucks what Alice saw. Julia found a spell. So get off your sorry ass and grow a fucking clit, Eliot."

He wants to respond with harsh words and anger but some small part of him is glad that Margo isn't coddling him. Alice won't make eye-contact with him and Penny 23 tiptoes by, scared to speak. Margo makes him feel like he isn't a porcelain person.

When he stays silent, she pushes thick book across the table and flips to a sticky-noted page. Seeing highlighter marks and sticky-notes on such an old book feels like blasphemy, and he's pretty sure the only reason he gives a shit about old books is Quentin. He collected worn Earthen paperbacks, haggled for them at pawn shops and cuiro-sellers. They had _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ and _Frankenstein_ and _The War of the Worlds._ Even in a fantasy land Q was still drawn to tales of the fantastical.

"Julia found a hymn," Margo says, "to summon our Lady of Cythera - "

"Who?"

"Aphrodite," Julia interrupts, "I put together a spell."

"Fantastic. A homebrew spell to summon a goddess. Because that never goes wrong."

She sighs, "I am on my last legs writing this spell, Eliot," at that he looks up at her, really looks at her. Red-eyed, gaunt and tired. Hair unwashed. Perhaps can trust that level of desperation. At the very least, he respects it, "The gods hate us. We know that. Cytherea is the only god we even have a chance with, and for this blessing we need a tailored spell."

"And what blessing is that?"

"It's not perfect," Margo interrupts, a helpless look on her face that he hasn't seen before, "but it's our only shot. Aphrodite had a boytoy who died and she cut a deal with the gods. We don't know what deal it was, but they both survived, he's a minor god of rebirth, no huge sacrifice needed. You're petitioning for that blessing."

It's a semi-cooperative spell, and Julia gives everyone a task - find something, anything, to offer Quentin and the goddess. Proof for Aphrodite that he is worthy of returning, and proof for Quentin that he is wanted. Both goddess and spirit must be summoned.

Kady chooses _Fillory and Further_ , Quentin’s copy. Marked with Plover’s messy signature. It’s Q’s childhood, his path to maturity, and his discovery that even fantasy can’t be read through a lens of beauty and perfection and romance. A calling card for what Quentin has done for Fillory, the ends he has gone to save it. And how much he loves the idea of Fillory. Eliot knows Fillory saved Quentin, too, both between the pages of a book and within the perfect ninety-degree angles of a mosaic.

From Penny is an egg, with a sharpie happy-face scrawled on it. He never really knew Quentin, not in this reality, but perhaps the egg is something of a symbol for friendship, growth, new beginnings. Or maybe Eliot is overthinking things and grasping at straws. Desperatly looking for some way to rationalize these strange gestures, to piece them together into a spell that might actually work.

Margo chooses Quentin's crown - _King Quentin the Moderately Socially Maladjusted._ Responsibility, belonging, that ceremony was so important to Quentin and Eliot thinks it might have been the moment he realized Quentin was more than just a good fuck, he was someone Eliot could (and did) truly care for. Q's wrought-iron crown glows hot in the fire.

Fogg finds Quentin’s intent to enroll paperwork, signed when he was accepted into Brakebills. Purpose, fulfillment, destiny, hope. It burns fast in the fire, reduced to ashes in the span of a second.

Eliot is the last one to the memorial-slash-funeral, shuffling towards the fire with his left hand gripping the head of a silver cane. He can't quite get his legs to work right.

He also can't quite get himself to believe that Margo and Julia's spell is going to work.

Julia throws a pack of playing cards into the fire, they curl and burn and smell of plastic lamination. Kings and Queens, all of them, crackling in the fire. Childhood magic, the sleight-of-hand tricks Quentin perfected. Even in Fillory they amazed people, they kept Teddy's attention for hours. Fast-flipping cards, tricks pressed against his wrist under his sleeve, pulled out of an ear.

Pale peach fuzz brushes his lips when Eliot kisses the skin of the fruit, inhales the scent of fifty perfect years.

Julia speaks and Eliot lets his mind wander, pulls himself away from the bonfire and the smell of cedarwood smoke. He thinks about how odd it is, that Quentin died young and old at the same time. There were so many things he had on Fillory, and he wanted it all again on Earth but disintegrated into sparks before any of it happened. Dying young, stolen, twenty-three years old - a little hole torn in the universe where something might have existed, where something did once exist.

_There's a lot he's going to miss out on._

Marriage. Fatherhood - because Eliot knows with aching certainty that Quentin wanted to be a father again - and somehow that thought strikes Eliot as absolutely _horrible._ Quentin was a wonderful father, careful and sweet and kind, always supportive of Teddy. And he loved it, it sparked something beautiful and caring in him. It made him _happy._ Hot tears prick at Eliot's eyes, roll down his cheeks, _Quentin Coldwater wanted to be a father again._

Eliot is never going to see Quentin with crows-feet decorating the corners of his eyes, no graying hair or smile lines. It was beautiful, really, ageing with someone, and Quentin is _never going to.-_

Never.

Alice scoots close and laces her fingers through his and he knows, instantly, that she knows. Knows why Eliot has to do the summoning, why he has to be the one to petition to the goddess, and why he can't speak past the sobs in his throat.

He throws the peach into the fire and lets his bones freeze, still even when everyone stumbles to their feet and returns to the cottage. Julia passes by, a gentle hand brushing his shoulder. He lights a cigarette on the fire, hand-rolled, bergamot. Warm summer nights in Fillory, tangled together under a multicolored quilt.

Smoke drifts in the air up towards Earth constellations, and Quentin is dead.

Eliot's fingers are numb, and Quentin is dead.

"This will work," Margo says at his side, sure and confident, eyes burning steady, "so woman the fuck up, El." Dark, boiling anger tinges her words and he knows she feels the grief just as strong as he does. But grief makes Margo overflow with rage and power. It just immobilizes Eliot.

He takes a drag of the cigarette his fingers and shakes his head, frozen still even when the fire licks higher and he feels the rubber soles of his bluchers melt. Oh well. He can't bring himself to care.

Margo pulls a charred stick from the fire, presses it into his hands. Rough wood, dry dead moss, he wonders where the tree is and what dead things it holds. She taps the open book on his lap, leaving sooty fingerprints, "I can't do this with you," she murmers, "but you don't need me. Get your man back."

All he can muster is a numb nod as he stands, bones cold and creaking. Margo smooths her skirt and presses a gentle kiss against his cheek, his forehead, and turns back to the cottage.

Right. Okay. He kicks aside a beer can and takes a deep breath, tastes smoke and fire, and starts to draw the sigil. Dragging the stick through dirt, leaving dark charcoal lines around the fire where the peach still burns, sending up bright sparks as the pit cracks. It's a looping symbol, with curls and dots and a dramatic flare that Eliot can appreciate.

It's dangerous, summoning a goddess, he knows this. He's seen what it does to people. A terrible, doubtful part of him whispers that it's a trickster, Reynard, and he'll be left bloody and half-dead before he can even finish the hymn.

But Quentin - even the smallest chance that this will work, it's enough to make him sit down cross-legged in the middle of the curling sigil, between two strong loops of charcoal. He casts a quick protective spell on himself, just a simple swoop of his pinkies and a curl of his middle finger. The peach pit is pleasantly warm when he pulls it from the fire, licks sticky half-charred juice from it and places it in front of him.

Now two playing cards, a king of hearts (blackened, burnt) and a king of spades. They go on either side of the the peach pit, aligned with Eliot's knees.

It's a relatively simple ritual, but it _hurts._ That's probably the point, he figures. There's no need for dragon eyeballs or fucking faerie tongues. Just shit that makes Eliot feel like a void is opening up in his chest, stretching him thin as a rubber-band.

Crying is the easy part, it takes _nothing_ to summon the tears that stream down his cheek as he draws up a memory and starts to chant.  
  
_"Poikilóthron᾽ áthánat᾽ ᾽Afrodita,_  
_paí Díos, dolóploke, líssomaí se_  
_mí m᾽ ásaisi mít᾽ oníaisi dámna,_  
_pótnia, thýmon."_

 _Don't - I beg you, Lady - with pains and torments_  
_Crush down my spirit_  
  
Perhaps, though, his spirit is already crushed. He certainly feels enough pain and torment to satisfy the goddess, to satisfy the poem.

Memories. The spell requires memories.

He remembers that first Fillory night, the gentle clink of Eliot setting down his glass and leaning forwards, "Hey," "Hey," and warm lips, tentative.

Nights between thighs, mouths and hips and fingernails.

Warm spring afternoons picking raspberries barefoot in the forest, teaching Teddy how to spot ripe berries. Fingers laced through Quentin's, wedding rings gleaming. Lazy and happy. Perfect. Grass between their toes, hazy sunlight filtering through tall evergreen branches, Fillory humidity sticking to their skin.

Hands wrapped around coffee mugs, bleary-eyed Quentin in a handmade wool sweater peering at him through the steam that fogged up his reading glasses. Easy _I-love-yous._

Eliot sobs and chants in some ancient language that doesn't quite fit on his tongue.  
  
_"Élthe moi kaí nýn, chalepán dé lýson_  
_ek merímnan óssa dé moi télessai_  
_thýmos immérrei téleson, sy d᾽ áfta_  
_sýmmachos ésso."_

 _Come to me once more, and abate my torment;_  
_Take the bitter care from my mind, and give me_  
_All I long for; Lady, in all my battles_  
_Fight as my comrade._  
  
Flowers grow from his palms and he opens his eyes, the last words of the hymn echoing on his lips _fight as me comrade, fight as my comrade, fight as my comrade._ Petals fall onto his fingernails.

When he opens his eyes, he sees _him._ Quentin, warm and alive and Eliot chokes out a half-laugh, half-sob, lunging forwards but his vision clears, the last tears sliding away and it's not quite him. He stumbles back onto his heels, swallowing down the joy.

"Lady of Cythera," he says, forcing steadiness into his voice, "It worked."

The goddess smiles with Quentin's face, "Did you doubt me?"

"No, my lady," because who he doubted was himself, "Can I - petition to have him back? None of this was supposed to happen and I," he breaks off, anger and deep terrible feelings swirling up in his chest, choking off his voice, "I just want him back." He's never been this desperate.

Eliot Waugh spins yellow flowers in his fingertips and prays. They weave up around his wrist, pressed cool against his blueish veins, and he breaths in time with a goddess who isn't Julia or Ember or Umber but someone fair and just and beautiful and she looks like Quentin, some flimsy facsimile of him. Her cool hand cupping his cheek and brushing at his tears feels like the palm of Quentin, and her sad brown eyes look too human (too real and beautiful and heart-wrenching) to be on the soft face of a goddess. Eliot knows those eyes.

Eyes illuminated by firelight.

The fire smells like peaches, burning to blackened carbon, and laminated playing cards. Plastic, paper, peaches, plums.

"What’s the cost?" Eliot asks, ready to - ready to give her whatever she wants, really. His heart or his blood or his eternal worship. The yellow flowers stretch their roots to the earth, dig into the dirt and tether his palms to the ground.

"You have lost everything I have to ask for," she says and sounds like Quentin and he shudders with another sob, because  
it's an awful thought, that he's so lost that even a goddess can't find something for him to sacrifice, "But know that not even my blessing can breathe back complete life."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Aphrodite tilts her head, something sad in her eyes, "He will be granted half of the year alive. Spring and summer, life. Come fall Quentin Coldwater will wither and die. Every year until you, too, turn to dust."

He suddenly understands _why_ there isn't a cost, because watching Quentin die, return to the Underworld, every year will tear him to shreds but he bows his head, forehead pressing against yellow flowers and bright, green leaves. The goddess runs her fingers through his hair like a mother and he says, "Yes, my Lady of Cythera. I understand."

Tears drip into the earth and mingle with roots, feed the flowers and the petals turn red as blood. He’s desperate and aching and if he doesn’t get Quentin back he thinks he’ll just let the ground swallow him whole.

"I know your pain," she says, sadness washing through her eyes (Quentin's eyes), "so know that not even I can bear the blessing that I give."

"How will I survive it," he asks, "the winters?"

"You cannot, but you must."

Eliot prays and prays and prays, hands clenched and fingernails digging little half-moons into his palms that draw blood with a stinging bite. Blood and dirt and Eliot thinks about gravedirt, nighttime robbers, stealing bodies from the deepsleep. Is that what he's doing - stealing Quentin from perfect, promised eternity?

If all of this even works, of course.

"There is no blessing without devotion," Lady of Cythera says to his anguish, although Eliot knows that is not her only name. But he wants to call her Quentin Coldwater. When she speaks, her features morph and melt, sometimes she has Quentin’ mouth but not quite, she’s not him, not entirely. But if he looks just right, if he thinks thinks thinks about Quentin, draws up memories and dreams, the visage solidifies and - there he is. Features slide into place, strong nose and soft brows. Warm eyes. Lips Eliot knows so, so well.

Quentin kneels before him, and Eliot cries something guttural and pained. The goddess looks sad. Looks sad with his face.

He wonders if this is what Quentin felt, watching a Monster wearing Eliot’s body.

"You look like him," he says through gritted teeth, looking up at her though his vision is swimming with tears, "you have his eyes, is that not proof enough?"

Proof. Proof of concept. That's the final ingredient in the spell.

When he looks up she is smiling, knelt down before him with her hands that look like Quentin's gripped loosely around his wrists where the flowers grow, "Is it proof enough for you?" The breeze blows smoke to his face and he blinks, smelling warm Fillory summers and firelight confessions. Stolen moments sneaking outside while the baby slept, or giddy mornings boiling water and grinding coffee beans. Eliot misses using his hands to create, using magic to make tomatoes ripen in spring humidity or pulling weeds from the garden and cleaning dirt from beneath his fingernails. He misses the softness of Quentin's hair, running his fingers through it and scraping his nails along Q's scalp. He misses baby Teddy's chubby fingers wrapped around his thumb as Eliot whispered nonsense promises of protection and love and being a better father than his own.

 _Useless and gay and drug-addicted rotinhell Eliot no-good son, no son of mine, queer queer queer queer_ \- not so much of a bad thing anymore, he thinks now, queer. Because that's Quentin and Eliot and Arielle sleeping tangled on a quilt, Eliot cradling Teddy's head against his chest and they were a queer family, all oddities and things that would have made his father spit on Eliot's perfectly-polished oxfords.

If those fifty years weren't proof enough for him how the fuck is he supposed to convince a goddess that he and Quentin, they're good and real and true.

Bravery.

He made a promise.

"I don't care about people," Eliot says, "I only ever gave a fuck about myself and Margo. I never wanted to love Quentin Coldwater. But I did, and I do, and I don't know how to love people. I don't have the words to tell you that I love him because they're not - they're not in my fucking vocabulary." He bows his head, scratches his face and tries to scrub the tears away, "I don't know how to prove anything to you, or to myself, but you have his voice and his eyes and isn't that enough?"

"You know the answer," she says, and when he raises his head she is gone. Melted into the bonfire or the shadows or the little yellow blossoms. Tiny and fragile and delicate.

 _Quentin_ feels _in a sudden burst of violence, a tearing at his throat and his chest. His blood boils and he is ripped in two, torn from the promised peace._

Dirt shudders beneath Eliot's palms and the flowers knit together, weaving to form a mass of yellow blossoms and spindly green leaves. Pulsing, alive, stems spinning together and in the center a shuddering flowerblossom heart, beating, alive, and the stems run red with blood.

Eliot whispers the hymn again, pleading, hunched over the mess of flowers, words slurring between English and Greek.  
  
_"Skimming down the paths of the sky's bright ether_  
_On they brought you over the earth's black bosom,_  
_Swiftly--then you stood with a sudden brilliance,_  
_Goddess, before me;"_  
  
He draws up every ounce of proof he has, every small touch and private smile, long fingers caressing the back of Quentin's neck and trailing through his perfectly long hair. He thinks about Quentin's eyes and two little white flowers bloom, leaves trail where hair might be, and the mess of Aphrodite's flowers start to form something warm and solid, moving with heaved breaths as the web of stems thins, nerves and capillaries. Muscles made of stretching leaves, sweeping and contracting with each heave of the floral lungs.  
  
_"Deathless face alight with your smile, you asked me_  
_What I suffered, who was my cause of anguish,_  
_What would ease the pain of my frantic mind, and_  
_Why had I called you,"_  
  
Plant melts into skin, the warm smooth curve of shoulder-blades and sharp elbows, curled roots are swirling knuckles, fingers grasping at Eliot's hand _warm and alive,_ Quentin's breath rattles in time with Eliot's sobs, newborn and naked in the dirt and yellow flower-petals. He lurches up, shaking, heart beating so fast Eliot can feel it pressed against his chest when Quentin curls against him, hair tickling Eliot's nose.

"You survived," Quentin says, words stained by tears, "it worked."

Eliot wants to say everything, tell him everything but he can't make his voice form all of the words he needs to say so he just whispers nonsense sorrows into the nape of Quentin's neck, and he doesn't think about how cold the winters will be.

"How did you do it?"

There's a second, unspoken question there, _what did you give up?_ but Eliot had nothing to sacrifice.

"Proof of concept," he says, "and peaches and plums."

**Author's Note:**

> Chant is Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite trans. Elizabeth Vandiver. The mythological basis here is the story of Adonis and Aphrodite.


End file.
